Blood Like a Lantern
by MarbleGlove
Summary: If Emily Prentiss is Psyche, then Methos is Cupid, which doesn't really work but he still runs from anyone who sees his true face. And blood is the lantern used to reveal him.


Emily gritted her teeth and kept her eyes open.

The unsub had gotten the drop on her. They'd known he was smart, strong, and fast but she still hadn't expected a man that large to move that fast.

Now she was tied to a chair, witness to the man's torture of his previous victims. Two live victims in different stages. If the unsub stuck to his pattern, he wouldn't take another victim until one of them died. The worst hurt, the worst mutilated, didn't look like he could possibly still be alive. The unsub would have gone out hunting soon anyway.

For now, though, the unsub had left in order to find suitable punishments for her. She felt a sort of grim satisfaction that she had no living lovers. This unsub punished the LEOs who got too close by killing their lovers first.

It was an interesting break in pattern for an unsub who preferred physical sadism to punish the LEOs with psychological sadism. But hopefully his failure to find anyone suitable for her would give the team time to come to the rescue.

"Okay, why exactly did Emily ask me to come here, again?"

Emily heard Adam before she saw him and felt the blood drain from her face. She didn't have immediate family. She didn't have a significant other. She'd liked Adam, but she'd only been on three lunch dates with the man. They'd never even had dinner. She certainly hadn't slept with him yet.

She hadn't even told the department about her dates. He wasn't her lover. There had been no reason to protect him.

Except apparently there was.

"She needs to learn a lesson, and I'm afraid your presence is vital to that lesson."

There was a pause, but when Adam spoke there was amusement in his voice rather than any fear.

"Wow, you're not even trying anymore, are you? You do realize that I know what Emily does for a living, right?"

"Then it wasn't very smart to come with me." The door opened and Adam was thrust into the room. He stumbled into the room and Emily fought to keep her face blank and her mind clear. She couldn't let herself panic over things she couldn't change. She had to be calm and ready to act for when she had a chance to do something.

"Hey Emily, I guess this guy wasn't lying when he said you were in trouble."

She couldn't speak through the gag but could only shake her head.

However, Adam didn't look nearly disturbed enough for the situation he was in. He neatly dodged away from the unsub who was behind him. It looked choreographed. The profile hadn't included two unsubs, and certainly no one like Adam, and yet her heart clenched because something was seriously wrong with the way Adam was responding to the situation.

He didn't flinch when he saw the vivisected bodies to one side, just noted that they were there, to confirm the evidence of the smell. And when he did do a double take, he wasn't looking at the dismembered bodies, or the fact that two of them were still struggling to breath…

He was looking at one of the survivors in particular and his face went still and blank as marble. He stared for a second and that second gave the unsub time to catch him. Except then the unsub was reeling back and clutching his throat because Adam had just crushed his windpipe as if it were nothing.

Emily realized that no, the profile hadn't been wrong about this unsub, Adam hadn't known about this situation, but maybe instead she was looking at a big game hunter. A serial killer who killed serial killers. And that was a profile that would fit a person who asked a member of the BAU out on a date, wouldn't it? This was why she didn't like going on dates.

On their dates he had been a scholarly intellectual with a sense of humor weighed towards multilingual puns. Now, though, he killed without flinching and inspected vivisected bodies with cold disinterest. Except it wasn't disinterest. Adam ignored the unsub suffocating behind him and just looked between the one prior victim and Emily, clearly trying to come to a decision. It felt endless except that it was maybe three seconds.

He wasn't acting like a big game hunter, either, who should have been proud of his accomplishment. But he had clearly moved on from the unsub and was focused almost entirely on the one victim. She didn't know anything about that victim. The BAU had only been brought in when the bodies were discovered after death, not because of any missing persons cases.

Adam knew something about this person and he was trying to make a decision between her and victim.

She wondered if he was planning to kill her as a witness.

Then he went to the vivisected victim who had caught his attention. "I'm sorry, kid. You've made it through the worst but there's still a ways to go. You have a future though and I'm going to do my best to make sure you get it." He spoke while he was arranging the victim's limbs and skin back in place. The body was barely breathing. "I know you don't trust me on this. It goes against all logic, but that's life for you. Only fiction has to make sense."

Emily made a noise through her gag.

"I'm sorry, Emily. I need to deal with this first." Adam moved on to wrapping the victim tightly in the sheets he had been laying on before. It would likely hold the pieces of the body in place, but it wasn't any kind of first aid.

Especially not when got his arms under the victims legs and shoulders in an awkward bridal carry, and lifted him with a grunt. He left the room and Emily was there, still tied to a chair and gagged.

When Adam returned, he was talking on a bluetooth device.

"There was a partially dismembered pre-immie and a woman I was dating in the same room with the man who did it and I had to choose which situation to address first."

Emily couldn't hear the other side of the conversation. Even as Adam approached and reached for her face. It took a lot of willpower not try to jerk back.

"This is going to hurt like a bitch, but I assume you want the tape off sooner rather than later?"

He peeled up one corner of the tape on her cheek, but waited for her to nod before he ripped it off.

"Catch-22. She would never hold in high-regard a man who sought her regard above the well-being of a kid. I lost my chance with her."

She memorized what he was saying into the phone, but still interrupted to ask her own question "Who was he?"

"He was a victim of your serial killer." Adam answered, and then, to the phone, "Have him shipped to, to the pirate and the lady. They owe me and can take care of him."

"Who was he that you're keeping him from receiving proper medical attention?"

"If he was given 'proper medical attention', then his condition would have been documented and his family contacted," Adam said, and then, "Yes, maybe, but it's hard to ask about secrets without revealing them."

"They would have received closure." She wondered how easy it would be to mask audio hallucinations by simply wearing a bluetooth.

"Yes, closure. An end. I don't know how much the BAU knows about such things, but that boy has a chance for a medical miracle and I can't let that be documented."

Adam spoke as if he were actually trying to tell her something. He was watching her closely. Emily was confused by this direction. "What type of things do you think that the BAU knows about?"

"Serial killers, of course." He was waiting for some reaction but she couldn't tell what. She shook her head, and he just smiled wryly before looking away.

Then he finally moved to release her hands from the where they were tied behind her back. She had been trying to untie them for hours now, but not gotten very far. He didn't comment as he unpicked the knots, the only sound the labored breathing of the final victim. The unsub had stopped breathing at some point when she hadn't been paying attention.

Once her hands were free, he moved away from her, staying near the door, as she leaned down to untie her own legs. She was only partially released when he finally spoke. "Thanks. I'm hanging up now. Emily, I've just received confirmation that the kid is on his way to safety and a good Samaritan call has been made to your team. They'll be here soon, which is my cue to leave."

She only saw the gun in his hand for a moment before he was crouching down to slide it across the floor to her. "You shouldn't be without defenses. Good-bye, Emily."

And then he was out the door and gone.

Hotch and Derek arrived three minutes later, thirty seconds before the ambulance. She timed it.

They sent a team to Adam Pierson's house before she allowed herself to be checked out by the paramedics.

It was over. She was safe and back at the BAU and their unsub was dead. It was over.

Except for all the ways in which it wasn't. An empty safe had been left open in Adam Pierson's apartment and while nothing else was visibly missing, there were no personal items to take.

"He looked... sad when he was making his decision, I thought he was deciding to kill me. He was giving me up. It didn't occur to me that he was giving up his own identity instead."

"He thought the BAU would know something about a medical miracle?"

She shrugged. She didn't know anymore than what she had said. But that he had made a choice between doing what he thought would help that victim, or keeping her attention. If there was a chance that victim could be helped and Adam had refrained from giving it because of her, she would never have forgiven him. If there was a chance. She didn't know about any medical miracles that would help that victim. The second one, less damaged, still had a poor chance of survival and no chance at all of recovered mobility in any limbs.

It was a path towards madness, to contemplate those kinds of 'what-if' questions. But she still wondered, what if. Medical miracles and serial killers. And secrets.

He had spoken to someone on the phone and called the victim a pre-immie. There were multiple people involved and named categories. He had mentioned 'the' pirate and 'the' lady and a favor owed. There were only so many ways to ship a body to someone.

There were enough loose ends to start tugging on a few to see where they lead.

And thinking of the way he had watched her, as he offered her those loose ends, and the way he had slid his own unregistered gun to her, she thought he wouldn't be unhappy if she did manage to track him down. He might even be willing to answer some of her questions.


End file.
